The third best videogame(s) of 2008

(Part of our series counting down the top ten videogames of 2008 -- with interruptions for the most disappointing and most overrated -- according to Variety critics Leigh Alexander, Tom Chick, Chris Dahlen and Ben Fritz. Full details are here. To check out the rest of the list, click here. Most importantly, vote for your favorite games of 2008 in the Cut Scene reader awards here.)

Leigh Alexander

Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks / Bethesda)

It's more of a prototype for the wholly-lifelike game experience than a perfect execution thereof, but no coin's ever landed this close to the cup. The expansive rendition of a post-apocalyptic Washington is both breathtaking and unsettling, a wide-open nuclear playground that offers a decidedly overwhelming array of options for how it's to be experienced. It's dark and exhausting, but the sense of discovery and the opportunity to mark each fallout-dusted stretch of land with the footprints of choices invoke an almost giddy delirium.

Tom Chick

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts (Microsoft / Rare)

Forget "Lego [Insert Popular License With Geek Appeal]." This is the best Lego game I've ever played. Never mind that it doesn't have the Lego license. That's Lego's loss. As I explore this colorful world built for exploring, gathering bits and parts along the way, "Nuts & Bolts" appeals to a unique compulsion that most games can't touch: the desire to engineer stuff. Not just make stuff. Lots of games are doing a great job letting me make stuff. The "Boom Blox" toy box, the map maker in "Far Cry 2," and the video editor in the PC version of "Grand Theft Auto IV" are all wonderfully accessible studios in which I can build something, consider it, and then ask myself, "Um, now what?" But the things I create in "Nuts & Bolts," the cars and airplanes and submersible attack ships, have immediate gameplay value in this colorful world. These are the vehicles I use to tackle various challenges: go this fast, jump this high, carry this doo-dad there, run this course, and so on. And I'm even free to break many of these challenges by outbuilding them instead of outplaying them. That's freedom: the ability to foil the developers themselves.

Chris Dahlen

The World Ends With You (Squre Enix / Square Enix)

I've heard from diehard Japanese RPG fans who say this didn't knock their socks off. Maybe I'm just not tired of angsty spikey-haired adolescents grinding their skills and saving the world. Or maybe I adored the game's winningly emo dialogue and its fantastic sense of place, from the ramen stand to Shibuya’s mythical phone booth of love.  “Any tree can drop an apple. I’ll drop the freakin’ moon.”

Ben Fritz

Fable 2 (Microsoft / Lionhead)

“GTA” and its legion of imitators have made physical sandboxes old hat, but “Fable 2” is the first successful societal sandbox. No videogame world has ever felt quite so alive or so full of consequences. A brilliantly accessible but rich combat system makes “Fable 2’s” quests a joy, but it’s the awareness that you’re fighting for something deeper – whether it’s new houses for all three of your spouses, a fierce reputation so people will cower everywhere you go, or revenge on the villain who killed your sister so many decades ago – that makes the experience matter.

Coming tomorrow morning: The second best videogame(s) of 2008.